--- name: "Pippa Ehrlich" canonical: "https://film.one/person/pippa-ehrlich" roles: ["Director","Editor","Writer"] born: "1 January 2000" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 updated: "2026-09-17T05:43:13.180310+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Pippa Ehrlich Director and editor. Born 1 January 2000 in Johannesburg, South Africa. ## Details - **Work:** Director, Editor, Writer - **Born:** 1 January 2000, Johannesburg, South Africa - **Elsewhere:** https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q99372653, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm11813828/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/2561786 ## Streaming the US now - **Netflix:** [*My Octopus Teacher*](https://film.one/film/my-octopus-teacher.md) (75) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Pippa Ehrlich > Pippa Ehrlich makes conservation films by getting into the water and staying there, and the footage she brings back is close, patient and often lovely. The trouble starts when she surfaces and lets the man do the talking. The best stretches of *My Octopus Teacher* (2020) are the ones in which nobody speaks. A cold kelp forest off Cape Town, one animal at the centre of the frame, and a camera that has plainly been down there long enough to stop being noticed. Ehrlich spent years freediving daily in that forest while she was developing projects, and it shows. You cannot buy that kind of footage with a larger crew and a shorter schedule; you have to have been there, and she had. She came to film from journalism, first as an investigative reporter for the television programme Carte Blanche, then in conservation journalism for the Save Our Seas Foundation, before joining the Sea Change Project around 2017. *My Octopus Teacher* was her first feature. She co-directed it with James Reed, co-wrote it, and cut it with Dan Schwalm from 3,000 hours of footage. The shape they found is clear and easy to follow: a year, taken a season at a time, one animal at the centre of it. What works is the water. Ehrlich has said the film's purpose is 'to connect people’s hearts to the beauty and wonder of the kelp forest ecosystem', and in the kelp it does exactly that, without a lecture. We were moved more than we expected to be, and what did it was the patience: twelve months on one creature, close to, in cold water, with no hurry to cut away. What does not work is the land. The film also wants to be about Craig Foster's recovery, and there it loses its nerve. His depression is described rather than seen, his narration tells us what the octopus is thinking a good deal more often than it should, and he is given the last word on everything. Werner Herzog kept his own doubts in the frame in *Grizzly Man* (2005). Ehrlich and Reed do not keep any, and we finished the film knowing a great deal about how Foster felt and rather less about the octopus. She has since co-directed *My Mercury* (2024) and directed *Pangolin: Kulu’s Journey* (2025), about the rescue and rehabilitation of an endangered pangolin. Foster has stayed with her across three films, as has the Sea Change Project team. We have not reviewed either of the later films, so we will say only that the pangolin sounds like her sort of subject: one animal, one person, and the bond between them. Her method, which is to get in and wait until the animal stops minding, gives her pictures few directors can match. Whether she can be as patient with the people on shore, and as willing to let them be doubted, is the thing we will be watching for. ## Biography Pippa Ehrlich is a South African film director, writer and editor. She studied journalism and media studies at Rhodes University and worked as a conservation journalist for the Save Our Seas Foundation before entering filmmaking. Ehrlich co-directed, co-wrote and co-edited the 2020 Netflix documentary *My Octopus Teacher* with James Reed. The film, which follows naturalist Craig Foster’s relationship with a wild octopus in a South African kelp forest, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and a BAFTA Award for Best Documentary. She has since directed *Pangolin: Kulu's Journey* (2025) and is part of the Sea Change Project, focused on marine conservation. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, variety.com, screendaily.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *My Octopus Teacher* (2020), Fi1m 75, Director, Editor, Writer — [page](https://film.one/film/my-octopus-teacher.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/pippa-ehrlich